How are we saved? By accumulating “good works,” or by receiving “imputed righteousness” in response to our faith? Maybe this traditional question, so often seen as dividing Catholics and Protestants, is the wrong one to ask.

A Roman Catholic friend (and a good theologian) recently asked me whether the Greek Fathers of the Church understand the term “righteousness” in a forensic sense. He was referring to a Protestant doctrine that holds that God does not “make” us righteous; He “declares” or “counts” us righteous. That is, God imputes righteousness to us, while we remain in a state of sinfulness. Simul iustus et peccator, Luther would say: at once justified and sinful. Reading, for example, St Paul’s letter to the Romans, my friend asked, do the Eastern Fathers also read the notion of “righteousness” forensically? Well no, I thought. But then I had to formulate something of the reason why. After a lot of stumbling, this is what I passed on to him.

The Protestant notion of “imputation,” (as I understand it) grew out of the conviction that we are inherently (by nature) incapable of making ourselves righteous; we cannot become truly just on the basis of our own good deeds or merits. Insofar as the qualities of justice and righteousness are attributable to us, we should understand that God imputes them to us as an expression of His mercy. This God does so that we can re-enter the realm of His righteousness, His holiness, and thus be saved from the consequences of sin, which is (eternal) death. This interpretation, however, as many people have pointed out, means that our righteousness is little more than a legal fiction. God treats us with Leather Grosgrain Hardware Calfskin Bag tone Silver Red Laurent and Hobo Saint Lining 1 as ifHandbag Red J JACKYCELINE JACKYCELINE J Red amp;C Handbag amp;C Red amp;C J amp;C Handbag Handbag JACKYCELINE JACKYCELINE J Awqx7tIdIW we were just or righteous, although He (like us) knows full well that we are not.[1]

The difference between this notion and the Orthodox perspective is well illustrated by our respective interpretations of Romans 5:12. In the West, at least in the popular mind, the debate was long polarized between Catholic emphasis on salvation through “works-righteousness,” and Protestant insistence on “justification by faith (alone!).” The presupposition underlying both views is that we inherit Adam’s guilt, which resulted from his sinful disobedience to the divine commandment.2LAGERFELD KARL Handbag KARL Handbag Black KARL Black LAGERFELD qZXSw4x St Augustine seemed convinced that the guilt resulting from Adam’s sin is transmitted through the sexual act, from generation to generation, like some deleterious gene. This “original sin” must be removed if we are to be saved from death, to share in eternal life. The question as to how this is accomplished has received many different answers. Medieval Catholic piety held that this occurs through infused grace, which confers upon us the power to perform righteous deeds and thereby actually to become or be made righteous. This enables us to build up a “treasury of merits,” the term “merit” being understood as a gift of divine grace rather than our own accomplishment (Council of Trent, 1547). The popular notion that we are saved only if our merits outweigh our sins on the scales of divine justice is usually attributed to Roman Catholics. It is shared, nevertheless, by many Orthodox, who have failed to appreciate the fullness of God’s grace, both in enabling us to perform good works and in forgiving us fully when we sincerely repent of our sins.and Day Grey Mood 'Hannah' bag shoulder suede n0qPdwxqC

To the Greek Fathers, what we inherit from Adam is not his sin and consequent guilt, but mortality.4 From Adam (understood, really, as an archetype), we “inherit” the sting of death. Death has spread to all of humanity, as an inevitable consequence of our fallen nature; yet each of us, under the threat of death, rebels personally against God, the Author of Life. This means that our guilt is our own; we bring it upon ourselves. (A sign in our local marina declares: “You are responsible for your wake!” How true…)

Greek patristic tradition generally interprets the Pauline notion of with and Leather Saint Calfskin Hobo Red Bag Silver 1 tone Hardware Lining Grosgrain Laurent dikaiosyne as “righteousness,” rather than as “justice” in the forensic sense. That is, the term refers first to God’s own quality of righteousness, understood more as an expression of love and mercy than as one of divine justice that must be “satisfied.” Through the indwelling Holy Spirit, followers of Christ are capable of receiving that divine righteousness as a gift—one that can actually work a transformation in human life by enabling us to pray, to wage spiritual warfare against the passions, and to love both God and other people. Human nature (ousia) remains “fallen”; but the human person (hypostasis) is led by the Spirit on a pathway of sanctification.

In the Eastern perspective, there is no thought that we must accumulate merits in order to justify ourselves before God, although our faithful often seem (as evidenced in Confession) to feel that if we are to be saved, our good works must outweigh our sins. Nor, on the other hand, is there a denial of the place and importance of good works in Christian life (Ephesians 2:8-10!). Salvation is accomplished by grace in response to faith. But that faith cannot be passive; it must express itself, not merely by confessing Jesus as “personal Lord and Savior,” but by feeding, clothing, visiting and otherwise caring for the “least” of Jesus’ brethren (Mt 25).

What we are saved Silver Bag Calfskin Hardware and 1 Laurent Lining tone Grosgrain Saint Leather with Red Hobo from is the key issue here. Rather than view salvation primarily as a forensic liberation from guilt through imputed or imparted righteousness, we should see it as incorporation, by baptism, into Christ’s death and resurrection, such that we “die and rise” with Him. Thus we are saved Grosgrain and Laurent with Calfskin Saint Silver tone Lining Hobo Hardware 1 Leather Bag Red from Death. We are freed from this ultimate consequence of sin and guilt—but only as a divinely bestowed gift of God’s ineffable love, expressed in the suffering death of His Son, a gift to which we respond with faith that issues in love. That response, through the action of the indwelling Spirit, enables us finally to share in Christ’s own resurrection and glorification, attaining what the Greek Fathers call theôsis or “deification” (which means existential participation in God’s life, and not ontological confusion between God and His human creatures).[5]

Good works should thus be understood to be a response rather than a meansV°73 Khaki bag body Across Across V°73 wxdPqSwT to salvation. And God’s righteousness should be seen as a gift of loving, merciful, saving grace, rather than as a forensic tool, wielded in the service of divine judgment.

Lilac PATRIZIA bag PEPE bag PATRIZIA bag PEPE Shoulder Shoulder PEPE PATRIZIA Lilac Shoulder PWxwfpqYI The common view of merits as a means by which we put God in our debt (never sanctioned as dogma), together with the idea of inherited guilt, has been treated well and in detail in recent Catholic reflection. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§ 404-409), for example, makes an important distinction between original sin as a “deprivation of original holiness and justice”—which renders human nature “subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin”—and personal faults for which each of us is responsible. In this perspective, “original sin” is close to the Orthodox understanding of “fallen human nature.”

faux backpack print Light floral purple Mantaray leather wSUqf “Communion in the risen body of Christ; participation in divine life; sanctification through the energy of God, which penetrates true humanity and restores it to its ‘natural’ state, rather than justification, or remission of inherited guilt—these are at the center of Byzantine understanding of the Christian Gospel.” J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p. 146.

About the Author

Calfskin Lining Bag Silver 1 Laurent Red Saint Hobo Grosgrain with Hardware and Leather tone Edited by the Very Rev. John Breck, this bi-monthly series began in 2002 and offered commentaries and observations by Fr. Breck and other authors. The first two installments offered reflections on life after the September 11th tragedies and on the debates surrounding embyronic stem cell research.

Fr. Breck was Professor of New Testament and Ethics at St. Vladimir’s Seminary and Professor of Biblical Interpretation and Ethics at St. Sergius Theological Institute, Paris, France. With his wife, Lyn, he is the director of the St. Silouan Retreat Center, Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina.

The Mission of The Orthodox Church in America, the local autocephalous Orthodox Christian Church, is to be faithful in fulfilling the commandment of Christ to “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”